


did i dream too big

by princegrantaire



Series: a world with love [13]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman: The Killing Joke (Comics)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bittersweet, Established Relationship, M/M, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 09:03:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17363063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princegrantaire/pseuds/princegrantaire
Summary: Logic, and Joker has only so much of that left, dictated that theremusthave been a man before. Someone who’d lived and died, alone and nameless.(Joker recalls ACE Chemicals.)





	did i dream too big

**Author's Note:**

> after spending yesterday afternoon reading the tkj script for all the flashback scenes, i simply couldn't stop thinking about it and had to write something! just to clarify, tkj went exactly as it generally does but joker is gay and also currently in a relationship with bruce (has been for some years by the time this fic takes place)
> 
> it could, with not much of a stretch, take place in the same universe as [my jeannie fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15328194)

The first-- No, the last thing he-- The burning. That’s what Joker remembers from that night. Murky water. Suffocating, drowning, swallowing so much of it ‘till he couldn’t breathe and then. There it was. Burning. Itching. Him, tearing his own skin apart just to get it to stop, clawing and shaking and hysterical, deaf to his own laughter. The sticky blood on his hands.

Joker can’t say, nearly two decades later, whether it was his own.

Well.

That’s not quite right.

It was and it wasn’t. The man from before bled for him. Through him. Logic, and Joker has only so much of that left, dictated that there _must_ have been a man before. Someone who’d lived and died, alone and nameless.

As one of those rare self-imposed rules, he doesn’t think about it. It shouldn’t matter. That’s what stings, still. It shouldn’t matter and it does, knife to the gut every time.

He can taste copper. Even now.

So, Joker doesn’t usually think about it. So, he gets Bruce, eventually. Moves in the manor. Meets the kids. Allows life and its little peculiarities to proceed unaided. He’s happy, really. Undeserving of it, too, of course, and knows only because he’s been told in so many words.

But _usually_ isn’t cutting it now. He remembers -- and it’s picture-perfect clarity, glossy even, not like the simple act of burning alive, the acid seeping in, the soundless screams -- his own hands. Touching his face. Chalk-white, smearing the blood from his lips, incomprehensible and cruel. That’s all Joker gets. _Hands_.

And here is an entire album of Bruce. Snapshots of a lonely childhood, glimpses of teenage years alongside a boy who might’ve been Harvey Dent in another life, other figures are few and far between but _there_ , all the same. Unmistakably there. Real.

It’s not enviable. God knows it’s not. There’s a profound sadness to Bruce, never pretty and always tangible, but _he_ can trace every step of the way. The kid on his knees in an alley, the countless funerals and everything in between. Happy moments, too; Alfred, his sons, the league, past girlfriends and first crushes. There’s a history here, one Joker will always know better than his own.

There must have been, he imagines, someone at some point somewhere. It’s not like--

Joker’s never put it into words. He doesn’t _want_ someone else, can’t picture himself in the arms of a man who isn’t Bruce. It’s just that he’d hoped, once. When Batman had promised him Arkham would help, before the guards and the doctors and the padded walls, Joker had understood that the months he’d spent on Gotham’s street had been enough. He’d made mistakes. He’d suffered enough. One day, if he just stuck around long enough, someone would come see him. Family, whatever shape that took.

That first time had lasted a full year.

And then he’d left.

If Batman didn’t know who he was, if no one came looking--

Joker wanted to make them _see_.

Subsequent visits hadn’t made it longer than a couple of months. It still feels impossible, that no trace would remain, that no one would be missing a… him.

He stares at his hands because it’s what he does. Still chalky and lifeless-white, bony now, worse than what he’d call familiar. Clutching a dusty photo album. There’s a thin red line running from palm to wrist, only half-visible now, where Damian’s cat scratched him this morning. Joker laughs and it sounds like a sob.

Why isn’t it enough? Joker doesn’t yearn for this often, not unless he’s pushed into it. A sense of isolation that’s never left. It feels--

It _seems_ entirely likely that he’s never had anyone. He’s shaking and hardly knows it, too used to the compulsive mechanisms of anguish. Joker’s never figured out what to do with all this loss, where to set it down when it comes outta nowhere, hints of tragedy on the other side of a fogged up mirror.

The attic ladder creaks as it’s pulled down. Joker jumps, drops the album and scurries behind the nearest box. It’s not much of a hiding place, he’s too tall even curled up.

“Joker?” comes Bruce’s voice, soft, questioning and faintly concerned, like he’s spent some time looking for him, like the attic’s been a last resort.

He could wait this one out, emerge later, himself again. Joker peeks from behind the box.

“Hey.” Bruce smiles. “Diana and Clark left a little while ago, if you want to--”

Right. He’d forgotten all about it. The original reason he’s ended up here, rifling through memories that’ll never belong to him. The league knows about them, that’s been the case for a number of years now. Joker prefers his interactions to be reduced to guest appearances all the same.

Bruce approaches then, sighs, kneels down and-- and he wipes away a tear trailing down Joker’s sharp cheek. Joker’s breath catches in his throat. He didn’t know, can’t quite tell when he’d started--

“What happened?”

No, Bruce wouldn’t know. About the burning. About the drowning.

Joker’s never thought to say. On good days, it makes no difference. “Nothing. I was just looking through some pictures,” he makes himself say, forces the garbled words through the imagined blood in his mouth. He nods towards the album, still on the floor. “Your, um, baby pictures.”

“Oh.” And just like that, Bruce’s arms wrap around him. He can’t possibly know. Not all of it, at least. Bruce rarely keeps his tenderness to himself.

But he’s real.

Here.

Now.

“Love you,” Joker whispers and hopes that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> title from florence + the machine's "south london forever"
> 
> hope you enjoy it!!! find me on tumblr @ufonaut


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